In agreement with The Spectator, John Medhurst has this, for anyone who still imagines there to be any Burkean option but Labour is post-Thatcher Britain:
Peter F Hamilton's science fiction novel Great
North Road, which follows a murder investigation in 2143 Newcastle, paints an
all-too-plausible vision of the future. The detectives remain public servants, but all
around them is privatised. Following a murder, different forensics companies
quote for business. The legwork is performed by unprofessional "agency
constables," and the police spend as much time on "contracts and
implementation" as they do solving crime.
The murder trail takes them to a "GSW" (Government Services Withdrawn) area of the city, which because of the breakdown of social housing and amenities has been abandoned by the authorities. Those who live there receive no health, education, transport or infrastructure services. In the GSW there literally is no such thing as society. If the current mass privatisation of the justice system in England and Wales is not exposed and reversed, the only unrealistic aspect of Hamilton's dystopian vision is that we could reach it a century earlier.
The coalition's latest proposals for Her Majesty's Courts and Tribunals Service will see its buildings and staff privatised, with the exception of the judges and magistrates. The service will be converted into a commercial enterprise under plans drawn up by notorious management consultants McKinsey. Revenue would be generated by levying bigger fees on wealthy litigants and attracting private-sector investment.
These plans exemplify the contempt that the Tories have for any concept of disinterested, non-profit-making provision of core state services for all citizens.The implications are dire. Court staff with serious public responsibilities will be employed, underpaid and demoralised by firms seeking to undercut each other. The administration of justice will suffer. Wealthy litigants paying more than others will surely look for returns on their money, such as speedier cases or softer judgments. And, as they literally come to finance the courts system, who will refuse them?
It will be the big public-service outsourcing firms such as Capita and G4S that will win contracts to run our courts. This threatens to create a major conflict of interest. Sometimes firms might be defendants in legal cases or employment tribunals brought by individuals or public bodies such as the Health and Safety Executive. The courts' new operators may even be running the police force that brings a case to trial.
G4S head David Taylor-Smith, whose firm spectacularly failed to deliver Olympics security, has predicted that private companies will be running large chunks of Britain's police services within five years, ranging from investigating crime to transporting suspects and managing intelligence and evidence. Taylor-Smith's firm is a leading bidder for the massive £1.5 billion outsourcing contracts for police services in the West Midlands and Surrey, including detaining suspects, developing cases and supporting victims, as well as support functions such as managing vehicles, finance and HR.
The Thames Valley, West Mercia, Staffordshire, Gloucestershire, Wiltshire and Hampshire police forces have also begun a tendering process for the running of custody suites and cells. Two other essential sections within the administration of justice - forensics and prisons - have already succumbed. The Forensic Science Service was initially turned into a government company that operated with a commercial remit.
When that failed, it was delegated to police authorities and then outsourced to a variety of providers. Britain is now the only major industrialised country in the world without a nationally maintained forensics service, and 75 per cent of our forensic scientists believe that miscarriages of justice are now highly likely. Britain also has the most privatised prison system in Europe. In England and Wales, 15 per cent of the prison population is held in private jails. In the US it is 9 per cent.
Private prison contracts in England and Wales are shared between three companies - Serco, Sodexo and G4S. These firms make their profits by paying private prison staff substantially less. In 2011, the average salary for private-sector prison officers was 23 per cent lower than public-sector officers. Overall costs are usually higher and reoffending rates worse. Yet still contracts for Moorland, Hatfield and Lindholme prisons were combined as a South Yorkshire private-sector prison cluster and put out to tender last year. The public-sector Prison Service was excluded from the bidding.
All this means that there is now a very real prospect that within a decade we will live in a country in which private police will help investigate crime, private forensics services will manage the evidence, cases will be tried in privately run courts, and some will then end in a private prison. Justice will be a commodity to be contracted out and eventually - like all privatised services, like all commodities - those who can afford it will have versions tailored to their needs.
Nearly 800 years ago the Magna Carta declared: "We will sell to no man, we will not deny or defer to any man either Justice or Right." In that spirit, Bar Council chair Maura McGowan QC said of the government's privatisation plans: "Courts are so much part of the justice system that they ought, in a proper society, to be administered by government as a public institution." Today's Conservative Party will have none of that. Unless it is stopped Britain will rapidly cease to be a "proper society."
The murder trail takes them to a "GSW" (Government Services Withdrawn) area of the city, which because of the breakdown of social housing and amenities has been abandoned by the authorities. Those who live there receive no health, education, transport or infrastructure services. In the GSW there literally is no such thing as society. If the current mass privatisation of the justice system in England and Wales is not exposed and reversed, the only unrealistic aspect of Hamilton's dystopian vision is that we could reach it a century earlier.
The coalition's latest proposals for Her Majesty's Courts and Tribunals Service will see its buildings and staff privatised, with the exception of the judges and magistrates. The service will be converted into a commercial enterprise under plans drawn up by notorious management consultants McKinsey. Revenue would be generated by levying bigger fees on wealthy litigants and attracting private-sector investment.
These plans exemplify the contempt that the Tories have for any concept of disinterested, non-profit-making provision of core state services for all citizens.The implications are dire. Court staff with serious public responsibilities will be employed, underpaid and demoralised by firms seeking to undercut each other. The administration of justice will suffer. Wealthy litigants paying more than others will surely look for returns on their money, such as speedier cases or softer judgments. And, as they literally come to finance the courts system, who will refuse them?
It will be the big public-service outsourcing firms such as Capita and G4S that will win contracts to run our courts. This threatens to create a major conflict of interest. Sometimes firms might be defendants in legal cases or employment tribunals brought by individuals or public bodies such as the Health and Safety Executive. The courts' new operators may even be running the police force that brings a case to trial.
G4S head David Taylor-Smith, whose firm spectacularly failed to deliver Olympics security, has predicted that private companies will be running large chunks of Britain's police services within five years, ranging from investigating crime to transporting suspects and managing intelligence and evidence. Taylor-Smith's firm is a leading bidder for the massive £1.5 billion outsourcing contracts for police services in the West Midlands and Surrey, including detaining suspects, developing cases and supporting victims, as well as support functions such as managing vehicles, finance and HR.
The Thames Valley, West Mercia, Staffordshire, Gloucestershire, Wiltshire and Hampshire police forces have also begun a tendering process for the running of custody suites and cells. Two other essential sections within the administration of justice - forensics and prisons - have already succumbed. The Forensic Science Service was initially turned into a government company that operated with a commercial remit.
When that failed, it was delegated to police authorities and then outsourced to a variety of providers. Britain is now the only major industrialised country in the world without a nationally maintained forensics service, and 75 per cent of our forensic scientists believe that miscarriages of justice are now highly likely. Britain also has the most privatised prison system in Europe. In England and Wales, 15 per cent of the prison population is held in private jails. In the US it is 9 per cent.
Private prison contracts in England and Wales are shared between three companies - Serco, Sodexo and G4S. These firms make their profits by paying private prison staff substantially less. In 2011, the average salary for private-sector prison officers was 23 per cent lower than public-sector officers. Overall costs are usually higher and reoffending rates worse. Yet still contracts for Moorland, Hatfield and Lindholme prisons were combined as a South Yorkshire private-sector prison cluster and put out to tender last year. The public-sector Prison Service was excluded from the bidding.
All this means that there is now a very real prospect that within a decade we will live in a country in which private police will help investigate crime, private forensics services will manage the evidence, cases will be tried in privately run courts, and some will then end in a private prison. Justice will be a commodity to be contracted out and eventually - like all privatised services, like all commodities - those who can afford it will have versions tailored to their needs.
Nearly 800 years ago the Magna Carta declared: "We will sell to no man, we will not deny or defer to any man either Justice or Right." In that spirit, Bar Council chair Maura McGowan QC said of the government's privatisation plans: "Courts are so much part of the justice system that they ought, in a proper society, to be administered by government as a public institution." Today's Conservative Party will have none of that. Unless it is stopped Britain will rapidly cease to be a "proper society."
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